Bandits on the Information Superhighway

Bandits is not just for new (and not so new) users frightened by the uncertainties of being on-line; it is also for those who are not yet connected, who have put off getting net access through fear of the unknown.

Author:
Daniel J. Barrett

Publisher: O'Reilly &
Associates

ISBN: 1-56592-156-9

Price: $17.95

Reviewer: Danny Yee

Bandits on the Information Superhighway
is the best book yet in O'Reilly's “What You Need to Know”
series, and perhaps an even more valuable contribution to making
the Internet accessible than their classic The Whole
Internet. It is a survey of all the bad things that can
happen to you on-line: it explains what the dangers are and what
you can do to minimise them. Bandits is not
just for new (and not so new) users frightened by the uncertainties
of being on-line; it is also for those who are not yet connected,
who have put off getting net access through fear of the
unknown.

The eleven chapters of Bandits (not
counting the introduction) can be read independently of one
another. The topics covered are privacy (mostly dealing with e-mail
and news rather than computer security in general); get rich
pyramid schemes; other common scams (advertisements dressed up as
ordinary posts, students trying to get others to write their
assignments, etc.); how to avoid paying money for free information;
how to buy and sell safely; Usenet spams, April Fools' day jokes,
urban legends, and junk e-mail; net relationships (particularly
romances); looking after children (including some much needed
deflation of media pornography myths); legal issues (what are your
rights?); what to do if you are ripped off
(where you can turn for help and when there isn't anything you can
do); and what the future holds for the Internet.

The format of Bandits, like that of the
other “What You Need to Know” books, is designed to be as
friendly as possible: it has short personal anecdotes (including
some from ordinary users) in the margin, separate boxes dealing
with more specialised subjects, and only as much technical material
as is absolutely necessary. But Barrett knows his stuff and the
contributors include such respected Usenetters as Joel Furr and
Brad Templeton: not once did I stop and think “Hey, that's not
right” or “That's not the right way of putting that”.

I do think a few improvements could be made to
Bandits. It assumes in several places that
users are connecting to a Unix server over an Ethernet (lots of
concern about packet sniffers, and discussion of “finger” and
“talk”) rather than to an ISP using a modem. (Not only are people
in the latter class now a majority of Internet users, but they are
the ones who most need Bandits, since they are
less likely to have a system administrator to turn to for advice or
reassurance.) Though lots of URLs are provided as sources for
further information, the focus is heavily on e-mail and Usenet and
there is little discussion of the Web itself. (It would have been
useful to explain, for example, that
http://www.univ.edu/admin/
is more likely to be an “official” page than
www.univ.edu/~bloggs/me.html.)
And finally, there is nothing on purely intellectual banditry.
(Serdar Argic, for example, was more than just a spammer: it was
his complete reversal of the truth and his creative use of
references which really made him dangerous.) Admittedly the ability
to distinguish the respectable and objective from propaganda and
the lunatic fringe is hardly something one can hope to teach in a
chapter, but it would have been nice to see a few
guidelines.

Disclaimer: I requested and received a review copy of
Bandits on the Information Superhighway from
O'Reilly & Associates, but I have no stake, financial or
otherwise, in its success.